93 The Pose — A One-Drawing Story

The body is always in motion — always squashing or stretching. Even while at rest it is doing something. You might say that a body is incapable of doing nothing, for even doing nothing is doing something.

People do things and everything they do is important and interesting. It is their little bit part in the exciting drama of life. Only the blasé cannot see it so. When an artist draws, it is from this drama of life that he gleans inspiration and subject matter. Resting, reading, running, playing, contemplating, talking, laughing, crying, on and on; these activities unveil the “dance of life” and call up images with which to portray it.

We see a lot of still photos in newspapers, magazines, etc. We must be careful not to let these influence us, for nothing in real life is still. When we make a drawing it is not a still drawing; it is a piece of some action, one drawing of a pose which is one pose in thousands upon thousands of poses which comprise the model’s full complement of daily poses. It is one extreme, minus the inbetweens.

Don Graham — that great teacher of drawing, painting and animation — said of the extreme: “Instead of being just a turning point, or a rest point in the action, it (the extreme) now became a drawing of great and special picture interest, a story-telling drawing” (the underlining belongs to Don Graham).

Most of the poses in class are rather subdued. The girls look in their purses or drink from teacups; the men try to look masculine by doing something physical to make their muscles flex. I usually shove a prop at them to assimilate some contact with reality. They talk on the phone or read from a paper. Those are vital activities. Much or our own lives are spent doing them. And yet I often have to remind the students that “Hey, she can’t be reading with her eyes looking off in another direction.” Or “Hey, how can he be reading from a paper, you don’t even have a paper in the drawing.”

You must enter into the drama — I call it a one-drawing story — or your drawing will be like an astronaut floating off into space without a tether line.

If all you had on your drawing were two eyes and the paper the story would be communicated. What you draw around that can be anything from a beautiful girl to a character like Triton or from an Adonis to a character like Goofy. They become the actors, but the story is two eyes looking at the paper:

I keep searching for ways to persuade you to draw ideas (story), rather than to draw drawings (things). Last week the model was bending forward looking interestedly at something offstage. The student, whose drawing I have Xeroxed here, was starting to make a drawing of a head, never mind the back bend or the support the arms were providing or most important of all, the look.

“Telling” a story stimulates you to use things in your drawing that reinforce your concept of the pose. In my correction sketch, I accented the bend, which helped to thrust the look forward. It allowed me to pull the left shoulder back farther, clearing the space into which the look had to travel. The lines of the back and chest act as directional helps for the look. I got a little extra movement by utilizing one of animation’s most valuable principles: squash and stretch — the front of the neck stretching, and the back of the neck squashing. Bending forward also allowed me to have the front of the shirt collar opening hang down, creating an ellipse that also helps to project the look forward by forming a sort of springboard for it. All these things work in tandem in putting over the one-drawing story concept.

You’ve seen the commercial “Don’t leave home without it” (credit card). Here’s one for drawing: “Don’t make a drawing without it” (story).